Page 151 of The Tower of the Tyrant

Less fraught waters, but few things were entirely free of the occasional storm.

That showed something about the past Fola, surely.She could remember her grand dream of conjuring the souls of the First Folk.A project she had poured herself into with reckless abandon—privileging it above friendships, social standing, above life itself.

Rebirth had given her some distance from that drive.Maybe she could be happy—or at least content—without acclaim and recognition for her genius.Life in Thaumedony was paradise.Why taint that with so destructive a force as ambition, which had led her into death?

The City held a wealth of beauty, which her past self had largely ignored, fixated as she was.So she set about exploring it, walking roads of seamless brick, climbing towers of glass, or structures built into the hearts of mighty trees, or formed of floating islands suspended by the First Folk’s magical artifice.She began an informal survey of the portals into worlds tucked into the fabric of reality like pockets in a garment—some no larger than a ballroom, spheres with a steep horizon and a nearly infinite sky full of alien stars and distant fire.

Another year passed in this way.She took up music—chasing, perhaps, that haunting half-memory of the singing girl.She was a fair enough hand at the keyharp, though less interested in performing than the pleasure of practice and the puzzle of composition.To that end, she had begun writing an opera in praise of the City’s wonders, for little more reason than to structure the thoughts and feelings that arose from her explorations.The dilemma of the past Fola, the distance between who she had been and who she was becoming in rebirth, began to fade.

Until, one crisp day in early autumn, in the grand plaza framed by the Great Tree to the south and the Starlit Tower to the north, a few notes of a song, and a chance meeting, brought those questions into sharp focus once again.

She was on her way to her meeting with Arno when she heard the melody, woven with reed flute and gittern.At first she thought she recognised it, but could not recall from where.It was like the scent of reddened leaves, or the fall of the last petal of spring—beautiful and melancholic, regret and grief tinged with remembered joy and hope for an imagined future.There were lyrics, only a vague murmur at this distance.She changed course—Arno could wait a while—and followed the faint music towards the Starlit Tower.

Morning light fell through the glass tower, draping the square in a half-shadow full of scattered silver.In that bright shadow a stage had been set up.Wooden blocks pushed together.Poles strung with bunting.A sign hung from a pale wooden staff—or a sword?—bearing the emblem of a rising moon over a placid lake, a white tree growing from the waters, and a raven perched in its branches.A real raven, though with a reddish tint to its feathers and yellow eyes, perched atop the sign, along with a brown-speckled dove and a crow the pale white of birchwood.

Two figures played upon the stage for a crowd of several dozen—small for the City, but respectable if these were newcomers without an established reputation.There were two performers: a man and a woman heavy with child, he with the flute and she with the gittern.Ram’s horns curled around his ears, draped in tangled curls.She sat beside him on a stool, her gittern braced gently against her rounded belly, her eyes closed and mouth open with song.A braid as black as ink spilled down her shoulder, strikingly dark against her pale throat.

There was something familiar, too, about her—the rough texture of her skin, visible even at this distance.

At the edge of the stage sat a young boy, no more than two or three years old, swinging his legs in time with the music.He kept his eyes down, only glancing up occasionally at the pregnant singer, whose oddly textured skin he shared.Her son?

No… Somehow, Fola did not think so.Absurdly, she felt he might be her father.

Such strangeness was possible in the City, whose powers of rebirth she well knew.

‘It’s a new song,’ said a voice, rumbling and heavy.‘A familiar melody, though.’

She turned towards the voice, a flutter in her chest.

‘They wrote it on the journey,’ the voice went on, rambling, overcome, his torrent of words a desperate flailing for solid footing.‘Had plenty of time.It took a while to find this place.They played it in near every inn from here to the western sea while we searched.He’s writing a play, too.Damon is.Or, I guess, revising one he’d already written.’

History defines us.Memories, unearthed and patched together.A story we tell about ourselves, about others, about the world.A forgotten moment, a fact denied, can twist that story away from truth—away from who we are, and who we could be, in the light of honesty.

But a moment remembered, a truth unearthed—even one hard and sharp with pain—can create wondrous possibilities.To make amends.To be better.

‘Sad, isn’t it?’he asked, trepidation in his voice despite the obvious strength of his frame, his four arms, his hands—one missing, one broad and scarred, the others small, and kind, and gentle.His face, too, was kind, and wet with tears as hopeful as the song.